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On-Demand Food Waste Startup Goodr Closes $1.25M To Expand To New Markets

On-Demand Food Waste Startup Goodr Closes $1.25M To Expand To New Markets

Written by Dana Sanchez

Aug 14, 2018

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Goodr, a 1-year-old Atlanta-based food waste management company that uses blockchain technology to redirect surplus food from businesses to people who need it, has raised a $1.25 million funding round.

The round was led by Precursor Ventures and supported by Trail Mix Ventures, Halogen Ventures, Techstars Ventures, and angel investors including Partpic founder Jewel Burks, according to a report in Hypepotamus. Capital also came from Soymet Energy, an alternative energy company that is interested in the potential of food waste for energy.

Goodr raised $100,000 in an earlier seed-stage round that closed in January, 2018, according to CrunchBase. Investors included Techstars, Techstars Anywhere Accelerator and Right Side Capital Management. In February 2018, Goodr was chosen to be one of 10 founding teams in the inaugural virtual accelerator, Techstars Anywhere Class of 2018. Goodr beat out applicants from around the world and made it into the top 1 percent of finalists.

food waste management

This new round is the first institutional money Goodr has raised. It will be used to help the company expand to other cities.

Jasmine Crowe, the CEO and founder of Goodr, is a social entrepreneur with no tech background. Her team of five people is on track to hit 1 million pounds of food distributed in one year. Clients include Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, the Georgia World Congress Center, Turner Broadcasting and Ponce City Market.

Goodr charges customers a fee for its service, based on how much food the company is recovering and how often Goodr goes out to recover food. Goodr then distributes the food to organizations in the area that help the community and people who are food insecure. It’s a way for companies to support the communities around them, Crowe told Moguldom in an earlier report.

Goodr’s dashboard shows clients how much they’re saving in tax deductions from their donations.

“We see ourselves as a waste management company,” Crowe told Moguldom. “When an organization pays us to pick up their surplus, they get a tax benefit from it. So, for every dollar they spend with us, we save them $14.”

Goodr is looking to expand outside Atlanta, with pilot programs set to begin in test markets Chicago, Los Angeles and Raleigh within the next few months, Hypepotamus reported.

The company will be picking up food from MetLife Insurance in Raleigh, Chicago’s McCormick Place (the largest convention center in North America), and is meeting with city officials in LA to discuss a possible city-wide pilot.

Crowe wants to bring on board a chief technical officer and a sales team to scale the on-demand food-pickup service, adding a new offering that will license Goodr’s technology, which alerts pickup operators when food is ready to go and sends it where it is needed using a software-as-a-service model.

“Many companies, especially food distributors, already have donation programs in place but would use the technology to streamline the process, Crowe told Hypepotamus. They’re piloting it first with Campbell’s Soup Company and are in talks with other food brands.”

Crowe said Goodr is getting attention from all over the country.

“The inbound leads for Goodr are literally phenomenal,” she said. “We really know we found product-market fit at the exact right time.”

https://twitter.com/TheGoodrCo/status/1017173367538028544

 

 

 

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